the first is as the inaugural director of the loven center for policy, which is a new research center established at ucla. i'm also the president and ceo of the center for jewish history in new york, which has a very substantial public history role as well. i should say the center at ucla really arose out of considerable demand from multiple constituencies. from students, from faculty colleagues as well as from the general public that we introduce a greater degree of historical knowledge and perspective into the policy, and this is something that we feel we can do at the university. especially in the current moment. i think that this is really important to the take stock of the moment we inhabit. yes, it is a time of attention deficit. yes, we live in a media-crazed world in which the news cycle is reduced to seconds and not hours. and yet at the same time, i sense, and certainly my center is a creation, is a reflection of this, that people want to know, how did we get to where we are? how did we follow this path to where we are? in a certain sense, i think of this moment as the momen